Dear Betch, Why Did My BFF Dump Me?

I am hoping to get some advice on something that has been bothering me for a little while now. I will give some background information, and hopefully I won't overdo it. Here it goes.

I graduated from college two years ago and have been working for a big corporation for the past year and a half. I am 24 and just about everyone I work with is a grandma or grandpa... ugh my eyeballs get a great workout from rolling them every time some old dude says "Workin hard or hardly workin!? har har har!" and my lung capacity has seriously improved from holding my breath every time some old lady waddles onto the elevator to go up one floor while gagging me with her generous application of floral perfume. Oops, I said I wouldn't overdo it and I'm already giving you way more than you need.

The point is, I do not have an abundance of people my age to bond with/get me through the hell that is an 8-5 office job. My old boss (I have since transferred to a different department) is this middle aged pervert and when I started this job a year ago I was new to a department that had created the role I was in. He is a huge creep and only hires younger women, which I have mixed feelings about because 1) so gross and transparent but 2) good! now I can have some friends? Anyway, I had no one to train me, I had to figure everything out on my own, he had awful communication skills, and for so so many reasons I hated it.

Soon after, another girl my same age came to work there and had the same role as me since the department was growing. I was so excited thinking I might have a friend. Wrong. This girl is so dull. She is incredibly hardworking, which is awesome, but has zero personality. Anytime I asked if she would like to get coffee, or join me for lunch, she would decline and stay glued to her desk. She also does not drink alcohol. She said she has never been drunk before (seriously?). Not really relevant, but I think it helps you get a better idea of how dull she is.

So my boring work days in front of a computer staring at spreadsheets were punctuated by lonely lunches walking around by myself looking for places to eat. I got used to that. THEN, a few months later, we hired another girl my age. Thank god! She and I became fast friends and always got lunch together, and would laugh and laugh at the ridiculous things the weirdos we worked with would do, and vent about the latest awful or annoying thing our boss did, and how we wished dull-girl was less of a dud and more like us. We talked to each other about our boyfriends, our families, and our lives in general. I thought we were very close.

A few months later we hired another girl our age. Yay! I had a "group" then and I was happy with that; I didn't feel lonely anymore and we got each other through the dull days. We got close with the newest girl too, but we were still closest with each other. Dull girl just stayed at her desk all the time working the entire day never interested in socializing, so we had lunch just the three of us and let her do her thing.

Dull girl is also a huge suck-up always kissing our bosses ass. One day last summer she invited our boss to her pool. Then she said our boss invited himself and she couldn't get out of it (I'm workin those eye muscles again with a big eye roll) She also talked about how weird she felt for him to see her in a bikini. Bitch, please. We all thought that was weird. Because it is.

ANYWAY (finally getting to the point now)
I transferred to another department months ago because I just really didn't like that job, and the one I have now is a much better fit and pays more. In this new department there are 3 other people and they're all much much older. That doesn't matter though because I can just walk over to my old friends and we still would have lunch together and continue our group chats and whatnot.

The weird thing, though, is that dull girl started to occasionally join us for lunch. I found myself playing on the phone most of the time there at the table because she really didn't talk much about anything but work and it was BORING. It's our lunch break and the last thing I want to hear about is some email you got, or some spreadsheet where the formulas were off. I mean damn, girl. Have you ever done anything wild in your life? Do you have ANYTHING interesting to talk about? What does your laugh sound like? The world may never know... But despite how boring she is we aren't going to exclude her... we didn't want to be mean. I would love to be close with all the girls I worked with. I just could not "click" with her. None of us could.

A couple of times though in the last month I started to ask my closest friend to have lunch with me and she would say "oh, I'm not hungry now, you can go ahead" which I didn't think anything of. Then that started happening more frequently. Then one day, I was walking out of the building and saw all three of them together eating lunch. WTF? Am I really being excluded right now? So I made a point next day to tell her "Hey, let me know when you go to lunch!" AKA Don't leave me out again. Well, guess what happened. I was left out. I'm not usually a confrontational person so my reaction was to just accept what was going on and do nothing while in my head thinking "Okay, fine. Guess were not friends anymore, later." instead of asking what the hell was going on. A few weeks go by with no contact, and then on my birthday I see a card on my desk from my close friend and a gift card. I run over and hug her and thank her and we chat and I think "oh, maybe it was all in my head and things will get back to normal." But they didn't. We didn't speak for two more days, and then today I reached out to chat with her online. I told her about a couple of things going on with me and then asked if she would like to have lunch. I don't like feeling like something is a one-way street so I debated trying again, but the birthday card made me think I should put in effort one more time. She responded to everything I said except the lunch thing, and then when I walked out of the building I see her sitting with dull girl again eating lunch. What in the world is going on? Am I being friend-dumped for someone with zero personality? Someone we both weren't particularly crazy for? And why straight up blow me off like that?

Finally I decided that since my feelings were hurt (hate how wimpy that sounded, but it's true!) I probably should attempt to figure out what was going on. I do not like feeling like I have no friends here at work, and asking about it can't make things any worse. I IMed her "Did I do something?" and she played dumb like "What are you talking about?" so I just closed the window and decided to seek out the wisdom of The Betches.

Advice please? What would be the best attitude to adopt on this situation? I do not want to go back to Cady Heron pre-and-post Plastics sitting in the bathroom stall with her sad little lunch tray. Am I overlooking something? I do not think transferring to another department is cause for the cold shoulder. Normally I think the best thing would be to cut my losses and move on because true friends don't treat you like that, but I really did believe we were close so I do care as much as I would like not to. I am also pretty confused?

As a social person who gets sad when hours go by with no human contact (Corny grandpa and Perfumed granny don't count!) I want some buddies again, and I would like to hear your thoughts about this.

Thank you for reading my novel! (and I apologize for the lengthiness)

Sincerely, Ditched by her main bitch

Dear Cady,

Appreciate you making the Mean Girls reference so I can continue with: maybe your friend ditched you because you're a mean girl—you're a bitch?

Like, I don't know you, but you spent the first good chunk of your email unnecessarily making fun of the old people who work in your office. I get that you're not going to black out with them over the weekend, but damn. I feel like anyone who gets that much joy out of mocking the elderly is probably not the nicest person. And then, when you're not making fun of the old people you work with, you're making fun of one of your coworkers for being boring. And don't get me wrong, she sounds kind of socially retarded and weird, but when you're sitting at a table with someone openly rolling your eyes at the things they say and playing on your phone, people notice that shit. That's like, pretty rude. Most people don't want to hang out with 24-year-olds who act like they're in high school. Just saying.

Unfortunately I'm not a mind reader and you didn't give me the contact information of the people involved, so I'm just going to throw out a theory. Maybe your coworkers got sick of your constant shit-talking and general negative attitude—I'm already put off by it and all I did was read your writing. Then, you moved departments and saw them less, which thus gave them the opportunity to commence the slow fade. It was nice of your coworker to get you a birthday gift, but IDK. When people feel like they're being purposefully excluded, they're usually right. You had the opportunity to ask what was up and then chickened out—of course she's going to play dumb at first. So short of confronting her again (kinda needy, not very betchy), I would try cozying up to Dull Girl a little. She seems like the missing variable in this equation—as in, you got pushed out and she got subbed in. Try to get to know her one-on-one. See what she's about. Then see if you can manipulate yourself into her good graces, and then back into the group.

Or you could just get a new job and be a little nicer to people, IDK your call.

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